A Virus Named TOM

A Virus Named TOM? what the fuck is that, you say! Exactly. I didn't know either. I got it in one of those Humble Bundles as a tag along. Pleasant surprise, though, it's pretty enjoyable! I had no idea what to expect going in, but A Virus Named TOM is a puzzle game. It takes place in this futuristic world where Dr. X has created such things as robo-dogs and moving sidewalks everywhere so walking isn't necessary. But then he created a giant people killing robot to make sure people were using his inventions, and that seemed kind of too far. As a result, he was fired. Like most crazy mad scientists types react when fired, he wants to watch the world burn, and thus, TOM was created.

The good doctor then sics TOM on each of his inventions in turn, until they're reduced to malfunctioning scrap piles. He does this by helping the virus spread in multiple levels of each invention. That's where you come in. In each of these levels, there's a main source of the virus that you're trying to spread throughout the entire circuit by matching up ends of differently shaped circuit segments. Each of these segments can be rotated, and the goal is to rotate the pieces so they make a complete circuit. In a complete circuit, the green virus is glowing in every piece, and there are no remaining grey non-infected pieces. The gameplay kind of reminds me of the hacking mini-game in Saint's Row IV, except way more stressful.

The stress is a result of both the level being timed, the possibility that you can run out of energy, and that there are anti-virus drones of various kinds roaming around that can kill your virus spreadin' ass. It's fun and stressful and caused me to shout many expletives at my screen. It remained enjoyable though because each level is a little bite size chunk that you can jump in and tackle even if you only have a couple minutes to play.

At times, it got slightly too stressful, and I needed a gameplan in order to tackle a puzzle. This may seem like cheating, but I contest THAT IT IS NOT! I would take a screenshot of the field of play and work it out outside the game in Microsoft Paint. "I'm still using my brains. I'm still solving the puzzle. It is not cheating.", I say to all the people that saw me drawing on my screenshots and proceeded to accuse me of cheating. You don't know what it's like in there! Don't judge me.

A Virus Named TOM was very entertaining to me. I could tell my brain was working out some of the levels long after I stopped playing that day, and I'm preeetty sure I even had dreams where I was solving these puzzles. All in all, pretty good for a game I essentially got as a free Humble Bundle bonus.